Necropsies aim to reveal secrets of stranded turtles
Volunteers gathered around Bob Prescott last Saturday as he prepared to cut off the bottom shell of a dead loggerhead turtle. Inside were the guts and a lot of fat, an unexpected amount of fat. “Hey, you guys, you want to see a fat turtle?” Prescott yelled to anyone who would listen. There were about 30 volunteers that morning in the necropsy lab at the Marine Research Facility at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It was the kind of moment a group of biologists, future biologists and amateur biologists could enjoy, a rarity, the many yellow and green clumps and pads of turtle fat. “It’s one of the fattest loggerheads we’ve ever done,” Prescott said.
Also in the Conservation section an Albino sea turtle and others released. An article on Galápagos tortoise sex in the Biology section.
Turtle News From Around the World
Biology
Animal Sex: How Galápagos Tortoises Do It
Conservation
MTDC to host its first Turtle Festival at Anjarle Beach
These People Found a Turtle Wrapped in a Ghost Fishing Net and Did the Most Heroic Thing
Albino turtle: One-in-100,000 hatchling sighted on Sunshine Coast
‘Lammy’ the rescued turtle returned to the ocean
Sea turtle strandings trend down in Georgia
Health & Medical
Necropsies aim to reveal secrets of stranded turtles
Sea turtle on the mend after being washed up on Cornish beach
Miscellany
Marina sand turtles attract 750 national sculptors
Did You Know…
Fibropapillomatosis disease caused by a form of the herpes-type virus threatens loggerheads with internal and external tumors. These tumors disrupt essential behaviors and, if on the eyes, cause permanent blindness.
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Photo from Steve Heaslip/Cape Cod Times.
